Fertility of the fields lost due to the disruption of God Learner magic. The same could probably be extended to many other things.
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> --- In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, Phil Hibbs <snarks@> wrote:
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> >
> > The Closing wasn't the only disaster at that time, it could well have been
> > earthquakes that destroyed the cities, or rains of fire, or swarms of
> > fish-headed chicken-pigs. Or maybe one of those maps is not quite right. Or
> > maybe the seas rushed in, destroyed the cities, and then retreated to their
> > former coastlines. Or maybe the surface of the whole area sloughed off into
> > the sea taking the cities with it, revealing a fresh landscape underneath.
> >
> > Phil.
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> Or, more mundanely, the harbor silted up and the city withered away, or its people were slaughtered and nobody re-settled, or it was conquered, burned, and its fields tilled with salt, or its ecoomic model failed catastrophically (fertility of the fields lost due to some reason, or deforestation made it implausible to keep fuelling the city, or salt water infiltrated the wells, or whatever) and those who didn't starve to death fled.
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> After all, there have been plenty of cities abandoned in earth history, without even needing massive disasters!
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